Name: Great Believers
Rating: 4.275641025641026 (156 reviews)
ISBN: 9780708899120

Rebecca Makkai

Great Believers

tiff <3

Well, here it was, then: longing, missing. the most useless kind of love.

sofia 🪆

“I think that’s the saddest thing in the world, the failure of love. Not hatred, but the failure of love.“

"If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it's not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You're in the same place now. That's a miracle. I just want to say that."

"In 1985, Yale Tishman is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery where he works. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying, and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster."--

The Great Believers

Ryan Mateyk

Lisa Lindquist 

Meghan Navoy

Was a little slow to get into it at first but then couldn't put it down. I loved going back in time between 1980s and 2015 in the story and seeing how the AIDS epidemic effected the victims and survivors. Really enjoyed this book even though it was sad.

faye

makai does a banger job taking the reader through the 1980s aids epidemic in chicago while exploring deeply human habits of judgement and bitterness. delightfully raw and sharply eloquent, a joy to read.

'the great believers' follows two storylines with a shared focal point - yale who has recently lost a friend to aids, and fiona, who is sister of said friend. the reader is bounced back and forth between a thirty year gap, all while connected to one another. i'm often not keen on reading split narratives, and this one does take a bit to find a good rhythm, but the payoff in the end is well worth it. 

this is an emotionally charged narrative - following two people impacted by the aids epidemic in different ways. the reality of the time is always heavy, and makkai does an excellent job of capturing it in a way that grounds the true consequence of it - these are not figures in history, but nonetheless people the main characters love and love strongly. 

this story asks what does one do in the face of a battle you are ill equipped to win? what if you do everything right and in the end the conclusion is out of your hands? what is the true cost of survival - of standing among the living? 

i hope i can find more words for this at some point, but i was so emotionally drawn to this book, and cried quite a bit during the second half. the layers and weaving of all different kinds of grief leaves the reader with a sense of gratitude for being able to learn about them, their lives, their loves. each character feels important to the overall story, memorable in their own ways. 

'the great believers' follows two storylines with a shared focal point - yale who has recently lost a friend to aids, and fiona, who is sister of said friend. the reader is bounced back and forth between a thirty year gap, all while connected to one another. i'm often not keen on reading split narratives, and this one does take a bit to find a good rhythm, but the payoff in the end is well worth it. 

this is an emotionally charged narrative - following two people impacted by the aids epidemic in different ways. the reality of the time is always heavy, and makkai does an excellent job of capturing it in a way that grounds the true consequence of it - these are not figures in history, but nonetheless people the main characters love and love strongly. 

this story asks what does one do in the face of a battle you are ill equipped to win? what if you do everything right and in the end the conclusion is out of your hands? what is the true cost of survival - of standing among the living? 

i hope i can find more words for this at some point, but i was so emotionally drawn to this book, and cried quite a bit during the second half. the layers and weaving of all different kinds of grief leaves the reader with a sense of gratitude for being able to learn about them, their lives, their loves. each character feels important to the overall story, memorable in their own ways. 

Anita

dnf but the part i read was good - just didnt feel like continuing

Gisela Ayala 

Review to come... oh just wait. This book. I'm sobbing.

Kathy Andrew

How did this book not win the Pulitzer?!?

Alex Q

I started this book during an incredibly busy week, so I’ll admit I had trouble making time for it. But I am so glad I did. This will be added to my all time favourites list, and I’ll be recommending it to anyone who will listen for the foreseeable future.

Fraser Simons

Fantastic characterizations of the characters and the structure that jumps forward and backward in time ultimately struggle against the premise, which has basically become the quintessential gay story. There are so many queer stories that do not focus on the AIDS crisis and do not play on this need to humanize people you should not have to struggle to have empathy for, that this feels out of time and place, despite its strengths.

alyssa

Summer Stanley

Enjoyed the intertwining of the two stories. I really appreciated how something would be casually mentioned in one story and expanded and impactful in the other.

Jennifer Dieter

I was skeptical, but Makkai handles the early AIDS epidemic and the people in Chicago who were impacted with a great amount of care and research. It took me awhile to get into it, and I feel there were parts that tended to drag. But I became invested in both Yale and Fiona’s stories, and Makkai writes beautifully.

Great Believers

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